


The Strange Case of the Travelling Madman and the Impossible Child

by Canon_Is_Relative



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Crack, Crack Crossover, Crack Treated Seriously, Crossover, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 15:48:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canon_Is_Relative/pseuds/Canon_Is_Relative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes and his faithful Boswell are on the brink of tragedy brought on by each man's stubborn refusal to......</p><p>Yeah, ok, really, this crackity crack is the shameless result of sleepless nights and stupid questions. </p><p>Question one: What would happen if ACD's Holmes and Watson met me and Imp's Calvin Jack?</p><p>Question two: How would that even happen?</p><p>Answer for all questions ever: The Doctor would make it happen just because!</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Strange Case of the Travelling Madman and the Impossible Child

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ImpishTubist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpishTubist/gifts).
  * Inspired by [One Man in His Time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/381343) by [Canon_Is_Relative](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canon_Is_Relative/pseuds/Canon_Is_Relative), [ImpishTubist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpishTubist/pseuds/ImpishTubist). 



Over the course of my life and association with Mr Sherlock Holmes, there have been occasions when I have written down the facts of a particular case with the knowledge that I would not be seeking to publish them, either not immediately or, occasionally, not ever. This is a case of the latter, and although it happened only last night, I hardly know where to begin.

It was getting on towards midnight, and Holmes was in one of his moods. He was stretched out upon the sofa, smoking and stubbornly ignoring the world, which included me, except for the odd occasion when he would cry out a fact of some unknown relevance or exclaim that such and such a person was unbearably stupid, or undeniably guilty. Only because of my long acquaintance with his habits did I know what he was doing - he had read the evening paper himself, since I was not there to read it to him, and was now turning the pages he had stored in his remarkable brain, running through what he had read and declaiming upon it.

God, listen to me. Long habit has taught me to always write as though to an audience, even though I do not know that anyone, apart from Holmes and myself, will ever read what I am about to write. In fact it is probably for the best that, once written, the pages be locked away and forgotten. I’ll try again, this time writing with truth, not an audience, in mind.

Holmes and I had had a spat. Verging on a domestic quarrel. I was thinking, once again, of leaving Baker Street, and he knew it. What he hoped to accomplish by acting out his foul mood, I do not pretend to know, but that is the way of things with us. I had returned very late from the opera with Miss Daniels, and he, angry because I had said I would share dinner with him, proceeded to detail to me the many and various diseases I would surely contract if things got out of hand with Miss Daniels. I, angry and embarrassed, told him that it was surely no worse than what I might catch from him.

Why we hadn’t gone to our separate rooms at once is also a mystery, but I think it was that I sensed that we were upon the brink of ruination, and that I owed it, to him and to myself, to stay in the room with him until we had worked it out. That is, until we apologized to each other, or I went up to pack my bag for good.

It was into this unfriendly scene that a mad man and his companions burst upon us. A knock at the door brought Holmes upright for the first time that day, and we listened together until the knock was repeated. He looked at me, meeting my eyes for the first time in hours.

'Not a client,' I said.

'No,' he agreed, reclining back on the sofa and shouting, 'Go away!'

In the silence that fell in the wake of his call, I realised that I had not been attending to the sounds outside the flat, and that there had been multiple voices on the landing. Holmes and I looked at each other, waiting to hear the sounds of retreat, but instead we heard the muffled voice of a youngster say, 'Oh, get away, I’ll do it. He’s shouting which means it’s not locked.'

He was right, of course, but how he knew that was a mystery to me. And to Holmes, it seemed; he sat up again and watched the door with the keenest interest. After a bare moment, the door opened sharply and a young boy, the owner of the voice we’d just heard, burst into the room on the heels of a tall man with very little hair and very large ears. He wore a strange, short jacket made of leather and the grin of a maniac.

'Hullo,' he said, his Northern accent think as butter. 'Sorry to burst in on you like this. Young Calvin here had lost his way and my friends and I thought we’d bring him home.'

'Hi,' the young, blonde woman behind him waved, ducking her head and looking around the room, blushing prettily. The man beside her, dressed in an odd, almost military fashion, introduced himself in a voice that betrayed him as an American and gave brisk nods to Holmes and myself, before his eyes returned to linger on Holmes’s face in a way that made jealous anger leap up hot and quick in my stomach. Then I saw that Holmes was watching me as I watched the girl, and my anger subsided in favor of cold shame.

'Dad…?' Our attention, then, was recalled to the boy. He was perhaps thirteen, with the look of the young man who has just begun to grow and doesn’t know quite what to make of his own height. His hair was a dirty blonde colour and his cheeks were ashen pale. He was staring at Holmes with an expression of mingled surprise and fear.

Holmes hawklike eyes focussed on the boy and then performed their so-familiar dance from his hair to his eyes to the loose fists at his sides and down to his toes, taking in his odd clothes and returning finally to his face. Holmes was frowning, an unfamiliar look of bewilderment upon his face. 'You believe that you know me,' he said, and it sounded more like a question than his usual deductive statements.

The boy nearly choked. 'Dad, what…what the hell are you wearing, and…' he turned and saw me, and his mouth fell open. 'Papa?'

It suffices to say that this boy came from another place, perhaps another time, and that he had been raised by people who looked just like Holmes and myself, down to our names and our mannerisms. He knew us, in a way that should have been impossible. Not only that, but when I say that he was raised by them, I mean that both men were his parents, acting out the parts of both father and mother to him, and partners and helpmeets to each other.

The Northerner attempted to help in his explanation by saying something about how he’d come upon Calvin when his ship had ‘crash-landed’ right in front of him because the boy's 'timeline' was 'out of whack,' and he thought it was somehow his responsibility to 'correct' it before Holmes and I 'made a bloody great mess of things.' He ended by quoting Shakespeare at us - 'the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer' - before Holmes summarily told him to shut up and banished him, and his attractive companions, to a far corner of the room.

When we had all come to understand each other - Holmes taking this all rather more in stride than either Calvin or myself, leaving us to struggle to keep up with him - Calvin proved to be a talkative and inquisitive lad, pelting us with questions about ourselves, and our life in London.

'So you two just live here together and it’s totally cool? You solve crimes and you blog about it? Er, write about it?' He looked hungrily at me, trying to figure me out. It reminded me uncannily of Holmes himself, a comparison not lost on my friend, who was surveying him with a mix of amusement and delight on his sharp face.

'Yes,' I answered him, 'I accompany Holmes on his cases—'

'And sometimes he even manages not to get in the way,' Holmes interjected.

I glared, Calvin laughed. I continued, 'and if they are interesting enough, I write them up and publish them. He has quite a following.'

Holmes rolled his eyes and gave a long-suffering groan. ' _I_ have nothing to do with that. I simply devote myself to the problems that present themselves to me. You, my dear Watson, may take all the credit and all the blame for turning them into the romantic little farces that are so popular with the masses.'

'Hey,' Calvin interrupted, glaring at him. 'How do you think you’d have any work at all if papa - if Watson didn’t talk you up to the presses and make you look good and…well…less-crazy than you are? I know what you were like before you met him, Uncle Greg’s told me all about it.'

Holmes looked supremely put out, so I attempted a deflection by asking who ‘Uncle Greg’ might be.

Calvin frowned slightly. ‘Greg Lestrade. In my London, he’s, or I guess he _was,_ a detective inspector. But he’s retired now.'

'And he’s your _uncle_?' I asked, incredulous.

'No,' the boy rolled his eyes at me as though I were unbearably stupid. 'He’s my godfather. He’s _your_ best friend,' he added, pointedly, to Holmes.

This was the first point in the evening’s proceedings where Holmes looked rattled. I’d long suspected that his constant stream of insults hid a higher regard for Lestrade than he’d ever admit to, but to call it affection? Absurd!

'I wonder if his Jack died, too?' Calvin continued, not noticing our reticence, clarifying by saying, 'He had a son named Jack, and he died really young. You were close to him, Dad - Sherlock, I mean - and gave me his name for my middle name.'

I hadn’t even known that Lestrade was married, but Holmes said that he was, and that yes his young son had died some years ago. As this revelation unfolded, Holmes kept his eyes trained on the boy, and I’d never seen anyone hold up so well to such scrutiny before. But, if he was telling the truth about who he was and where he came from, I suppose that he is more accustomed than anyone to being subject to Sherlock Holmes’s penetrating gaze.

Indeed, he seemed to find it rather amusing. Shortly afterwards he asked, 'What can you deduce about him?' while turning to point at the tall man in his black jacket, the Doctor as he’d called himself.

'Oh no,' the Doctor called back with a grin, 'you can leave me right out of it.'

'Yeah,' the blonde girl said, elbowing him with a fond smile. 'He’s undeducable, this one.'

'No one’s _totally_ undeducable,' the American winked at her, and she rolled her eyes.

Calvin laughed, but sobered quickly when the Doctor started to say that it was getting late and they really should be getting him back to his proper home.

Holmes and I rose together to say our farewells to the boy, and he surprised each of us in turn with a fierce embrace. Holmes stood wooden as a statue for a moment, then seemed to melt, enveloping Calvin in his arms, one hand pressed to the back of his head. Watching Holmes in this unprecedented display of affection, I felt something in my own heart begin to thaw and melt, almost painfully. I was used to thinking of my friend as cold - brilliant, yes, but ruthlessly so - and seeing him claim a small token of affection from this small boy set in motion a chain of thought that I have not been able to put aside since.

How remarkable Calvin’s world must be, that two men could acquire a child and raise him together. Where had he even come from, how had they found him, I wonder? Perhaps he, or his mother, had been destitute. Thinking this way has lead me to thoughts of the Baker Street Irregulars, and last week when little Wiggins told us with shame in his voice that he needed extra work to help provide for his sister since she’d gotten herself into a situation. It had quite gone out of my mind but now that I’ve remembered, I think I shall go looking for them soon, and see to it that the poor girl gets the proper care she’ll be needing.

In any event, after bidding us farewell, Calvin followed his strange companions out the door - the girl waving and the American directing a lascivious wink towards my friend that once again set my blood to boiling - and just like that they were gone. Sherlock, watching me closely, settled back into his place on the sofa, folding his hands over his chest and waiting for me to speak. But I could not find the words to break such a heavy silence, and he soon drifted off to sleep.

He is still waiting, I expect, and soon I will wake him and ask what he thinks of it all. Perhaps he’ll tell me that he simply switched out the cream in my tea for his seven-per-cent solution. Or perhaps he’ll wake and open his eyes and I will see there a trace of that wonder, that affection, that gripped him last night. Perhaps he’ll tell me what I long to hear.

He is stirring now, so I must conclude.

**Author's Note:**

> For my favourite Imp, erstwhile coauthor and dear friend. Happy wintery celebratory times, love!
> 
> Answer for unasked question: Ok, yeah, I guess you could say this operates in the "Winter's Child" 'verse, but truthfully this is pure and utter crack. However if you want to place it somewhere, I'm pretty sure it's [the night of Uncle Greg's heart attack, when Cal was out getting high with his friends.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/381343) Nothing is real, and nothing to get hung about.


End file.
